Epic Mickey Review

If you don’t like Mickey Mouse, you’re not human; it’s a fact of life.  Mickey has been a dominant power in the Disney universe for a long, long time, so it is unsurprising that he’s netted himself yet another game.  But this one isn’t all about Mickey, oh no, the game is also about his predecessor, Oswald.  More specifically, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

If you’ve not heard of Oswald it’s not really a surprise.  Oswald was Disney’s shining star for a few cartoons before Mickey took over with popularity and Oswald was put on the back-burner.  Epic Mickey is the story all about the Wasteland, where all of the forgotten Disney characters live.  Warren Spector has taken the time to carefully recreate a homage to all of these forgotten characters, like Clarabelle Cow, Horrace Horsecollar and Pete. 

As the story goes, one night Mickey decides to enter a mirror in his house, being transported to a room where a magician, Yen Sid, is carefully painting the world for these characters to live in.  Mickey comes along when the magician is gone and ruins the whole lot by accident when he’s playing around, then runs away to leave someone else to clean it up.  Many months later, whatever he created comes and gets Mickey from his own world, sucking him into the Wasteland, and the main mission of the game is for Mickey to return home.  Seems simple enough, right?

As you might expect, it’s not simple at all.  Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is angry at Mickey for stealing his limelight, thus dooming him to the Wasteland, so he’s generally making a nuisance of himself and getting in Mickey’s way.  He’s not really a bad guy though, it’s just that Mickey mostly destroyed the world by accident, and he wants Mickey to attone for his sins by destroying the Shadow Blot, thus returning the world to normal to Mickey can return home.

Each level is made up of the main mission and various side missions, with a lot of collectibles in the form of E-tickets (the currency of Wasteland), extra paint or thinner, collectible pins and old cartoons.  You’ll be using paint to recreate parts of the world, either to make new platforms, complete side quests, make enemies friendly, or just to get more Guardian Spirits.  Alternatively, you can use thinner to destroy enemies, find hidden areas behind painted ones or destroy terrain.  It’s a lot of fun doing either, and you’ll need to do it a lot if you’re planning on hunting down those extras.

Whilst there is no voice acting, characters will narrate their own stories through on screen dialogue and their own grunts and murmurs.  It’s not a great way of telling the story, but you’ll be distracted from this due to the gorgeously created cut-scenes.

You’ll find yourself wandering through a lot of different sets of scenery too; Mickeyjunk Mountain (made from old Mickey Mouse memorabilia), Tomorrow City (a futuristic city) and Mean Streets (a grimy version of Main Street, USA) to name a few.  In between all of these levels is a small ‘palate cleansers’ projector screen, in loving recreation of a past cartoon in 2D that Mickey must platform his way through.  It’s a nice change from the 3D of the main game.

On top of all of this, the sound is amazing too.  Jim Dooley has done a great job redoing all of the songs from yesteryear; each world has it’s own music, each projector screen has the music from that cartoon, and it sounds as if it was ripped straight from the era too with music taking a few moments to adjust to the right key, just as if it was played on a record player.

There’s a morality system in play too.  The first choice you need to make it whether to release a gremlin on a pressure switch thus hiding a treasure chest, or open the chest and flinging the gremlin far away.  From there, each choice you make shapes the world a little, ultimately changing one of the many endings you see.

The game looks gorgeous too, between the cut-scenes, the lovingly created worlds and the characters, it’s up among the best looking Wii games.  The use of darkness and light really helps show what is good and what is bad, and most importantly, what needs to be painted or thinned.

It’s not all praise though; the camera system isn’t great, and I did have some issues with the pointer when I was painting which can be irritating, but these are only slight blemishes on an otherwise spectacular game.

The main quest takes around twenty or so hours to finish, without doing side-quest (of which there are a lot), add this to multiple endings and a metric tonne of collectibles, and you’ll find yourself coming back to Epic Mickey a few times, just in a vain attempt to see it all.

Conclusion:-

Epic Mickey is a love letter to the Disney franchise.  Some characters make you feel bad for forgetting them, but you’ll rejoice in a chance to see them again in the game.  Massive replay value, a great soundtrack and gorgeous visuals will keep you coming back over and over.  Warren Spector and Junction Point have created a true masterpiece of a game here; this is a must-have for every Wii owner.

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